staymaker
nounEtymology From stay + maker.
1
Someone who makes stays.
- The author of these Memoirs informs us, that Miss Reay was the daughter of a staymaker near Leicester-Fields; and at the age of fourteen was placed as an apprentice to Mrs. Silver, a mantua-maker, in George's Court, Clerkenwell […]1779, The critical review, or annals of literature, volume 48, page 80:
- Her Paine: rebellious Staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single Needleman, did by his 'Common Sense' Pamphlet, free America....1837, Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution: A History […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Chapman and Hall, →OCLC, (please specify the book or page number):
2 more examples
- The young man bowed, and very politely led the way to a little back parlour, where the staymaker took a seat, and in a very slow and stately manner gave him numberless recommendations concerning the size, colour, and shape of her chaussure.1847, “A soirée in a porter's lodge”, in Chambers's Journal, volume 8, page 90:
- This entry from the diary of Richard Viney, Staymaker, is one of many in which he mentions the physicality of staymaking in the same breath with sociability with his clients.2009, Lynn Sorge-English, “Constructing Identity: The Staymaker Forms the Lady in Eighteenth-Century Britain”, in Historical Perspectives on Social Identities, page 79:
- Related terms
- staymaking